I don’t know that anybody’s tracking this, but my guess is that it’s already the case that most high school students studying CS in the United States are doing it online. Since we are not producing enough new CS teachers, the push to grow CS education in high schools is probably going to push more CS students online. This is how schools in Arkansas and other states are meeting the requirements for schools to offer CS — simply make the virtual high school CS course available, and you’ve met the requirement. No teacher hiring or professional learning required. I know from log file analyses that we are seeing huge numbers of students coming into our ebooks through virtual high school classes.

They should put together some of their tutorials into online lessons. Title one of them "Intro to Programming...pre-Java programming". Don't mention LiveCode and concentrate on meeting Common Core Standards (topics). Add projects and some quizzes and you have it.

Or piggyback on what other schools are doing, package up their livecode lessons and sell them at a nice profit.

Of course, if you have a warped sense of humour like mine you will see how funny it is that a teacher in Edinburgh has to learn about LiveCode from someone staying in Bulgaria

I'd guess my sense of humor is pretty warped. I'd also guess this is somewhat of an indirect answer to my earlier question about the results of every school in Scotland using it, in 2 years, people who were not in on it have no idea it happened. If this teachers school was part of it, they obviously left it behind for some reason.

Well, I wouldn't bother to translate it into Bulgarian for the simple reason that ALMOST ALL children and ALMOST ALL programmers in Bulgaria have a sufficiently good level of English to cope with LiveCode
already.

I disagree with that. Of course, today in many countries children learn English at school. But if you're not so good in English, you'll immediately feel like you're in the second row. At Wikipedia, translators have a category of the 500 most important text modules, which cover 80% of all ads. I think that's an ingenious approach. This means that children in particular can work in their mother tongue, and in the case of rare reports or errors, English is sometimes used. But then they'll have to ask the teacher anyway.

I DO believe that translating instructional materials into major world languages such as SPANISH, CHINESE and ARABIC could prove valuable, but as Bulgarian is a minority language spoken by about 8 million people, and as Bulgarians, being aware of that, are doing their best to learn 1 or 2 major world languages that is not worth the effort.

On the part of Runrev/LiveCode only the possibility of multilingualism/localisation should exist. If the need for a language is there, regardless of the number of speakers, some volunteers will immediately find themselves doing the work in their spare time. There is f.eg. software in Rhaeto-Romansh (40,000 speakers) but no software in Lingala (20 million speakers).

The same applies to documentation and training materials: today, they are scattered everywhere, better all in one place.

you're not so good in English, you'll immediately feel like you're in the second row.

There is no "feel" about it, you are in the second row.
English is, like it or not, the de facto global language.
But the simple fact is that some people are more stupid than
others, more motivated, and so on.

It is only the people who spend their time making other people's lives
difficult with politically correct barking who either believe or pretend
to believe that humans are all born equal: they forget about genetics!

I run an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) school in Bulgaria, and teach intelligent
and/or motivated children: those who are too stupid and/or too lazy to keep up with
the classes either drop out of my school or are pushed by me. Let's call this Social Darwinism.
Interestingly enough I have had some really quite stupid children who have worked
extremely hard to gain a good level of English: I will always favour them over the
intelligent ones who are lazy.

I, for one, cannot be bothered to spend my time bending over backwards to drag kids
who either don't want to or cannot learn English into the front row.
I have a virtual queue of EFL teachers outside my door who are worn out trying to
make silk purses out of pigs' ears because of their employers' refusal to accept
that some kids belong in the second row, or even the third.

------------------------------------------------

LiveCode being tried by schools has got nothing to do with whether it is available in
other languages than English, but it has a lot to do with:

[I shall illustrate each point with an example from Bulgaria, but that will not differ that
much from most other countries.]

2. Levels of teacher motivation.
Most teacher, having acquired a moderate level of competence
in a few languages can see no reason why they should spend time
outwith their working hours getting to grips with another.

3. Popular Opinion. (and this example is from Scotland).
I went to buy a Pentium IV computer in 2004 in Dundee. When
I asked for one without Windows pre-installed the salesman looked
at me as if I were daft and asked, "How can you run a computer
without Windows?"

c.f. comments about LiveCode not being a "real programming language".

4. I don't believe LiveCode is doing enough "push" to gain traction in the educational field.

Last edited by richmond62 on Thu Jan 04, 2018 1:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interestingly enough, I taught a group of Bulgarian teachers
who teach a wide range of subjects and have NO English,
how to "assemble" relatively sophisticated stacks for content
delivery and reinforcement in their subject areas over two
weekends.

Lack of English did NOT block those teachers' progress;
their high level of motivation helped them no end.